Late Thursday, the New York Times published an explosive report on the special relationship that Donald Trump and his children have enjoyed over the years with retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and his children.

According to the report, this relationship allegedly benefitted Trump’s real estate business to the tune of $1 billion in Deutsche Bank loans enabled by Kennedy’s son, Justin Kennedy, a top executive at the bank — at a time when other mainstream banks wouldn’t lend Trump money because of his troubled business history.

President Donald Trump listens while Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy speaks during a ceremony in the Rose Garden of the White House in April 2017. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

This relationship also may have helped Trump secure a second vacancy on the Supreme Court with Kennedy’s announced retirement. The Times asserts that Trump, his administration and his children, notably Ivanka Trump and Donald Jr., nurtured this relationship once Trump was in office in order to convince Kennedy that his judicial legacy would be in good hands if he chose to step down at the end of the court’s term. Kennedy had long talked about wanting to retire.

The Times story somewhat builds on a 2017 report from Politico that describes how Ivanka and Donald Jr. were key to cultivating this relationship. For one thing, even before Trump became president, the Trump children knew Kennedy’s son, Justin Kennedy, through New York real estate circles, Politico reported.

“Your kids have been very nice to (Justin Kennedy),” Kennedy told Trump, while shaking Trump’s hand after his first speech to congress in February 2017, Politico reported.

“Well,” Trump said, “they love him, and they love him in New York.”

Ivanka Trump’s role in solidifying this Kennedy relationship is demonstrated in an event that took place a week before that speech. Ivanka Trump brought her daughter Arabella Kushner, now 6, with her on a visit to the Supreme Court where they sat in seats reserved by Kennedy as his special guests. The mother and daughter listened to an oral argument, heard the justices announce several decisions and joined Kennedy for lunch.

Ivanka Trump swings her daughter Arabella Kushner in the Rose Garden at the Congressional Picnic in June 2017. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

And as has been the case with other famous charm offensives deployed by Ivanka Trump, with her fashion brand and as a senior White House advisor, she no doubt adopted her glamorous working mom persona in the meeting with one of the most powerful men in American law. Arabella’s presence likely helped bolster this persona, as well as any soft power strategy her mother tried to deploy.

Indeed, the event shows another instance of Ivanka Trump bringing one of her children into a work-related situation as part of an apparent effort to win over the favor of someone who can be useful to the White House.

After the visit with Kennedy, Ivanka Trump did what she has often done in her job championing her father’s White House: She shared a photo of Arabella and herself in a Washington D.C. setting as a way to generate good PR for both herself and her father’s administration.

“Arabella & me at the Supreme Court today,” Ivanka Trump wrote as a way to also put in a good word for Kennedy’s Supreme Court. “I’m grateful for the opportunity to teach her about the judicial system in our country firsthand.”

Arabella & me at the Supreme Court today. I'm grateful for the opportunity to teach her about the judicial system in our country firsthand. pic.twitter.com/1YXHyZ9ADZ

Since her father became president, Ivanka Trump’s habit of bringing her three children, Arabella, Joseph, 4, and Theodore, 2, into her work at the White House has met with increasing controversy.

In April 2017, she had Arabella and Joseph sing in Mandarin for President Xi Jinping when the Chinese leader was visiting Mar-a-Lago for an official meeting. The same day that Xi dined with her father, Ivanka Trump’s fashion company won potentially valuable China trademarks.

Several months later, Ivanka Trump faced criticism when she trotted Arabella into the Oval Office, while the president was facing difficult questions from New York Times reporters Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman about the Russia scandal and other controversies.

Right after Trump accused former FBI director James Comey of lying during his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Arabella popped in with her mother, who said that she and Arabella just wanted to say hi. At her grandfather’s urging, Arabella showed off some more of her Mandarin skills. Trump beamed with pride: “She’s unbelievable, huh? … Good, smart genes,” according to a New York Times transcript of the meeting.

It turned out that Araballa’s interruption allowed her grandfather to pivot in the interview, which perhaps is what Ivanka Trump intended, the Times reporters later explained.

Over the 17 months of Trump’s residency, people on social media have accused Ivanka of often using Arabella and her brothers as “political props” for White House propaganda purposes.

But Ivanka Trump’s generous sharing of social media images of her sweet-faced young kids provoked a true political crisis in late May.

Ivanka Trump and her son Theodore Kushner (@IvankaTrump screen capture)

That’s when she posted a gauzy photo of her cuddling 2-year-old Theodore, at the same time that widespread news reports were detailing accounts of young children being “ripped out of the arms” of their mothers at the U.S. border under her father’s zero-tolerance immigration policy.

The White House senior advisor, mother of three and self-styled advocate for children was accused of being “tone deaf,” or worse, by posting the photo, which she captioned, “My ! #SundayMorning.”

A writer for the Guardian essentially accused of Ivanka Trump of race-baiting and said she was “the most odious of all Trumps,” while others called her everything from “a modern-day Marie Antoinette” to a “nasty, soulless troll.”

Ivanka Trump also drew a lacerating, profanity-laced comment from “Full Frontal” host Samantha Bee who called her a “a feckless (expletive).” Bee later apologized, saying her use of the word referencing women’s anatomy was “inappropriate and inexcusable” and that she had “crossed a line.”

That week, Ivanka Trump took to Twitter to respond to the criticism about using her her kids as political props and to staying publicly silent on the controversial family separation policy.

She issued a three-part response in which she quoted Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius as a way of saying she was going to ignore the trolls and other “distractions” and calmly focus on “the work” ahead of her.

3:3 Focus on what is before you, on what you can control and ignore the trolls! Have a great week!

Ivanka Trump repeated that position about the criticism in an interview Friday morning with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business Network, the Washington Post reported.

Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and their children Arabella and Joseph arrive at a New Year’s party at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort ( NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

“I have chosen, and I made a conscientious decision a long time ago, that I was not going to get into the fray, and that means that I’ll absorb the body blows that come my way,” Trump told Bartiromo.

Bartiromo also gave Ivanka Trump the chance to put forward the idea that she’s partially responsible for her father’s reverse on his family separation policy, the Post reported. But not surprisingly the topic of whether the first daughter would continue to bring her children into her work at the White House didn’t come up.

Ivanka Trump only said she would continue to focus “on the task at hand.” That task, she said, “is serving the American people and using this moment in my life to advance an agenda that I deeply believe in and feel very fortunate to be able to work on.”

Martha Ross is a features writer who covers everything and anything related to popular culture, society, health, women’s issues and families. A native of the East Bay and a graduate of Northwestern University and Mills College, she’s also a former hard-news and investigative reporter, covering crime and local politics.

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